Newbie War Problem

Hi all,

Not quite sure where this belongs, General, Beginner, or War and Peace.

I'm the President of Etar on Kebir Blue. I'm a new player. I've read some of the guides, I've looked through the settings and I've got a solid handle on the economic side of things, as I'm ranked 23 in score and 7 in finance and I did that in maybe a week or two.

I tried the War Game tutorial and grabbed a neighboring computer country with low losses and effort. I know it said the next war would require a land invasion so I made a long range division.

Declared on anther neighboring computer nation. Got a message that the C3 got a instant promotion to level 2. Did the same steps that the tutorial had me do the first time. My air units were absolutely slaughtered. My ammo and unit quality were 240-280 the defender's were only 120. They had two defensive air units, not one, but I thought my better ammo and weapons would compensate. I could only send one unit at a time to attack their units and each time, my unit got obliterated and they barely dented the computers.

What am I doing wrong? I see an old guide from Aires about taking a raiding a C3. I'm not interested in raiding, I want to make a pocket empire around my main nation. Is there a newer guide? Is there a more detailed war guide about the jump between C3's at level 1 vs level 2?

Thanks,

Banedon

There aren't really any good guides on the forum right now.

While this isn't the answer you're looking for - I have a recommendation for you.

You've only been playing a week or two, yeah? Well quit KB and come to WG or FB. Kebir Blue is extremely barren of other players and you'll struggle to find anyone to interact with there. White Giant has the most players and Fearless Blue has the most active player base (if you don't create a little diplomacy for yourself, you might get eaten up!). I say this because if you're serious about investing in an empire, those two locations are better in my opinion for it (and I've played on all worlds at various times).

White Giant has MANY more players, and has several federations that might help teach you the war side of things.

Without seeing what you clicked on and what you shot at, my best guess is you never destroyed the enemy air defense. So they shot back at your each time you shot and were able to crush you.

Hello E_O,

While KB might be more lightly populated, it's also more likely that I can build an empire without stepping on someone's toes, or wreck someone's day by accident. The rules of war shouldn't be different, and I'll have to learn what I did wrong *somewhere*.

I had three Attack Wings, all at weapon and unit qualities between 240-280. The C3 first one, then two defense wings at unit and weapon quality 120.

Just like in the Tutorial, I targeted the C3's defense wing units with my air attack units. I lost all the attackers and barely damaged the defenders.

Thu Nov 2, 4800 Air Force Attack Unit 'Falcon' attacks Defense Interceptor Wing Bilbao
The Democratic Union of Semanta (the attacked country) reports:
Bilbao lost 38 interceptors.
Bilbao lost trucks, gasoline and military supplies.
68 soldiers were killed and 147 were wounded.
The defense was assisted by the Defense Interceptor Wing Oblong.
The War Index remains 53.33
Etar (the attacker) reports:
Air Force Attack Unit 'Falcon' lost 380 fighter planes.
Air Force Attack Unit 'Falcon' lost trucks, gasoline and military supplies.
The attack may have been reduced or eliminated by Anti Missile Missiles and the unit did not receive any ground support.
1773 soldiers were killed and 3738 were wounded.
The War Index remains 53.33

This is what I did in the tutorial and it worked before.
I had the unit quality edge, I had the weapon quality edge.
I don't believe I can send all three attack wings to hit one target simultaneously, so how do I wear them down?

Build up wherever you want, I was just trying to help. There is basically zero chance you'll be at war on any planet besides FB anyways. KB is the least populated planet, so if you don't want friends or enemies, you're good to go.

Try shooting at the defenses of a town or county instead of shooting directly at the plane. The instructions are quite poor. By shooting at one enemy wing, it allows a second one to respond, which is part of why it's not very effective.

Also - I tend to use only quality 330 weapons and ammo. Tends to help a bit too.

For a neighboring level two c3 I use 900 offensive anti aircraft missile batteries and 900 offensive mid range missile batteries. Buy as close to 330 quality as you can get. You shouldn't even need 20,000 ammo for the aamb, or 5000 for the mrmb.

Target the defenses of a county and attack *defenses* with 900 of each.
First hit you're going to lose over 200 mrmb. That's okay! They're going to lose a ton of helos. Hit 3 or four times until all helos are gone.

Now send in a long range battalion maxed out with heavy artillery, about 70 midrange missile batteries, and what ever else you like, and start attacking city *target*s.

Always, always, ALWAYS, view target defenses before attacking target. That c3 will throw up a garrison when you least expect it.

And remember to paint the map first.

Good Luck!!!

My second war back to back. I didnt have enough missiles to deal with the defensive air wings. Skipping that step you should be good. use your bombers to Bomb the defense of land targets and then proceed to destroy each one. Forts, coprs, towns, cities. airports. ect. Until you have the required war index. At least thats how it played out for my second war I did right after the first one.

I shouldnt have done so given the lack of supplies but I didnt want to back out so I found a way and finished it up.

Well that was some crappy advise I gave. Some of you vets should call me out when I do that.

I've found that if you form a division instead of firing straight from the base, you may not have ANY loses. Against a level 3 c3 I used a division with about 940 offensive anti aircraft batteries and filled it out with about

135 antiaircraft missile batteries

135 missile interceptor batteries

172 defensive missile batteries

All helos gone and zero losses on my side. Also you don't need mid range missile batteries at all at this point as long as you don't attack targets with garrisons. Save them for level 4 where you're going to need bunches.

Also stay far away from any Land Defense or Long Range divisions!!! They will kill you.

I just started a new account on FB and started my first war.

I followed the instruction as on the document shown, step by step.

I destroyed the one interceptor wing in four attacks using a fighter wing.

Then attacked the fortifications. using a attack and bombing wing.
The fortification was destroy destroyed in a single attack.
same with all other fortifications.

Using the same wing, I started to destroy corporations.
These too were destroyed in a single attack.

after destroying 4 or 5, the war index of my enemy went below 40 and the war (first C3 war), was over.

Although this is a first war and should be easy, it was far too easy.

I had it tested after we have made some changes to war parameters and the power of weapons several months ago. We always test after changes to make sure the first war "tutorial" works.

The tester said that it works.
He did not say it was absolutely trivial.

Now I saw it myself.

I think that the first war should remain easy but with one of the following upgrades, I will try to make some changes that will require some more attacks.

The entire war was won with a single fighter wing, used 3 or 4 times and the rest of the war was taken care of by a single attack wing that did not even deplete its ammunition.

So the beginners war works.
you need to follow the instructions.
The interceptor wing must be destroyed first.

Fortifications should be harder to destroy.

The second war should be much more difficult but not devastating.
You cannot win such a war with the basic army your country had.
You need some more wings and other units and the war does not end when the war index goes under 40.
You need to reduce it to zero.

There are players here who got to WL 19 and higher.

I'm glad you tested it, Andy. I agree level 1 is quite simple, and think your proposed, small changes to it seem good.

Your callout about the interceptor wing is an important one.

A small piece of feedback: One thing you could look at in your instructions is order of operations. I actually don't think destroying fortifications and corporations is necessarily the fastest, cheapest, or best way to go about attacking a c3 you might keep. This is just my opinion though - so perhaps other players may not agree with that.

My experience taught me it's usually faster/cheaper/better for the long term if you take out the capitol and cities first in c3s and therefore have to shoot at the least number of forts possible. There are other things that could be said as well, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts, because at minimum, your method worked enough to get a win.

I'd love to see more players have success in their early attempts at war, and obviously, functional instructions are a great help with that.

Fortifications can be replaced quickly and the cost is not very high.

Destroying cities, causes many casualties and a huge damage.
Losing population leaves the country with even a smaller population.

The damage is then repaired by purchasing construction products and the country gets into debt.

Maybe faster, but higher damage.

I hear you - and again, thanks for testing all of this and working toward ensuring this process is good for our new players.

I will say it costs a LOT more ammo to take out enough forts (you need to destroy many more forts than you would cities - and using bombers is fairly inefficient for destroying forts compared to other weapons). It also takes longer to win a war if you focus on forts instead of cities since you have to destroy many more targets.

Additionally, if you're worried about the country going into debt from damage, destroying all of its corporations is probably not a great idea. Tough to make money without those.

I understand what you're saying about population loss from shooting at the capitol and cities, but in 2-3 real life days, all that population will have grown back by the country's natural pop growth, so it's not really a huge deal in my opinion.

If we're worried about whether or not a player can win at war level 1, the easiest and fastest way makes sense to me, so I just wanted to make sure I said something while we're on the topic.

Regardless of what you decide, I will say your work on war levels the last few months has been promising, and I appreciate your willingness to interact and consider proposals from the player community.

Thank you,

Thank you. we will keep improving the war game.

I think there are more ways to win quickly.
Probably need to test in details which way is better.
Only 5 corporations were destroyed, not all.

I will try your way one of these days.

In the mean time, we will make the fist war just a bit less trivial but it will remain very easy.

We will also check the second war.
It should be more difficult but not as devastating as described

I've tried to avoid blowing up C3 nation corps for a few reasons:

Corps are the economic heart of a nation, destroy them and you will have a problem.

Especially in the beginning, many of the corps you're wrecking require game levels you have yet to, or are unlikely to, reach.
Blowing them up is destroying something you literally can not replace.

Many corps in the C3's on KB that I've seen are fully upgraded and profitable.
To rebuild/replace them would take at *least* 50 months (almost 9 days), or 10 Gold Coins for a super upgrade.

I've yet to test this, but I doubt blowing up multiple factories with 300k employees each, will cause fewer total population losses to a nation than blowing up a handful cities and/or the capital.

But that said, getting a nation down to 0 is hard without absolutely wrecking *something*, be it factories or population centers.

To get the war index to zero, all fortifications and military bases have to go but these are easy to replace.

maybe a few cities. Invading the country will probably do the rest.

A quick point of clarification here. Andy - your strategy works. We know that because you have won against c3s. However, I actually disagree with some stuff you said here. It's not necessary to destroy all fortifications or even ANY military bases to win. I've never done either with a c3 and have certainly conquered my share of them.

I never, ever attack military bases in c3s. Maybe against a player where doing so can stop them from launching certain attacks against you - but not against a c3. Destroying forts? Yeah - they usually are involved, but I've never had to destroy all of them before.

I'm not saying you can't do it, but just that you don't need to from what I've seen.

You likely know all this, but I just wanted to be clear about it since there may be players who think destroying military bases and forts is the only way to win against c3s if they read your comments - and you've designed a better game than that. A fun part of the game you've made here is there often are multiple ways to achieve the same goal - and it's interesting for me to hear how you play the game.

You probably ran many more wars than I ever did.

Others here tested more.
I am not the war guy here.

I destroyed the fortification because they deliver many damage points.
I never suggested that this is the only way.
There are of course other ways.

There are also war tutorials around with more info.

BTW
I just told a new player what to do to improve employment.
It is on the forum now.

So maybe you and others have some comments on that.


There are indeed many ways to do things here.
Also choices of corporations, products, trading strategies (I recently copied what a successful player did with excellent results).
Surprising after all these years.

I am the formulas guy in the simulator. These formulas sometimes get ahead of me and I am left there wondering what happened.

We probably have 6 miles plus of formulas. If We had all the time, we would probably add another 12 miles. It was intended to have thousands of parameters and too complex to just easily predict.

Absolutely. There was a period of time where I fought very many wars against c3s, and I do have a lot of experience with the war engine you guys have built. I greatly respect all the work you've done, and I'll say again, your strategy works as does mine.

My message was just meant to help clarify possible options for anyone reading along - so my apologies if it came off like I was insulting you in any way.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

There are indeed many ways to do things here.
Also choices of corporations, products, trading strategies (I recently copied what a successful player did with excellent results).
Surprising after all these years.<!-/Quote-!>

I love hearing that after years of playing, even you discovered something new that works better than what you're doing. I have had this happen to me several times recently as well with different parts of the game. This is part of what I love about simcountry. There are often are multiple viable strategies to accomplish things here, and if you look hard enough, you often can find something new.

Hello again,

I've had success taking over my second C3 by taking out the forts, painting the map, blowing up most of the C3 military units, and then taking out the capital plus a few cities.

The Offensive AA Missile Launchers were the key that I needed.

Now I'm scouring the military datasheets, and I'm wondering why some weapons are considered "good" and some are "bad".
What makes a weapons system great or useless? I've seen posts in the forums or online saying Jeeps, or Armored Vehicles, or some other system are bad but no explanation as to why.
Rate of fire? Damage to target? Lack of durability? Comparative costs or crewing requirements? Something else?

Good questions.

I'll share my opinion:

What's good?

- Longer Range (if your enemy is 500km away, and you have a weapon with 30km range, that's not helpful). This is why I almost never use anti-tank missile batteries, for example. The weapon is ok, but just hard to use, as you almost never can get close enough to use them. Far better to invest *MORE* in things you will almost always be able to use because they have the range. Often, weapons with longer range are more expensive, so it's a balancing act between strength and costs.
- High Damage output. Bombers and drones hit lots of the same things, but I usually use bombers because of how much stronger they are. You don't want to have to use 10 units because your weapons keep getting destroyed when you could just have 1 stronger unit that works.
- Offensive weapons I use a lot (doesn't mean these are for sure best - just ones I tend to arm myself with more than others): bombers, cruise and conventional missile batteries, fighters, mid range missile batts, offensive aa batts, tanks/artillery (if you're close - use these to "attack target" but not to "attack garrison")
.
What's bad?

- No range
- Things that target what your enemy ISNT using. If your enemy has airplanes, don't use tanks to try to shoot them. Use your own planes or Offensive AA launchers like you just had success with.

Jeeps and armored vehicles aren't "bad" - they just aren't what you should use to spearhead an attack. Jeeps and armored vehicles serve different purposes - such as being part of supply units. I'd actually say most of the weapons aren't "bad" - but they DO have a specific way they can be used best. Practice, practice my friend.

Fighting wars is like playing rock-paper-scissors. If you know what weapons are good against what, you can usually counter your enemy. That takes practice and in particular, paying attention to how well your weapons do by looking at the attack log when you fight.

When you used bombers, did they do well against defensive missile batteries? If so, then use them again next time against defensive missile batteries.

It's not bad to destroy c3 units, but it's not necessary. To win, you need to drop the war index to 0, and units don't really give you any points toward lowering the war index.

Again, after each shot, try checking the log on the left of the war screen. See how many damage points you did for attacking a fort. See how many you did for attacking a corporation. If you hit a city, check how many points you got for that. You learn a lot by just watching what happens.

E.O.
You did not insult us.

We love constructive criticism, not just thrashing things, but rather show alternatives.

If many of you say that doing something in a certain way gets you better results, we listen carefully.

Sometimes there is a lot of noise and it is hard to find the important bits and sometimes, it is short and to the point.

Keep going.

second war is still possible to win with starting army and supplies. You simply have to alter the initial strategy from the first war. As you will not have the means to clear the sky but still capable of reaching war index of zero.

Good to hear.
I thought it was not possible.

I can confirm this.

I recently restarted and used the beginner army to get 2 countries.

BUT I am used to the war engine and I understand and know a lot of things that newer players don't. A small upgrade to the guide would solve all these issues.

Be my guest.
place an upgrade to the guide and we will move it to the right place.

give or take a year.
(Just joking)